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When Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president of the United States in the 2016 general election, he was immediately dismissed by political pundits and media commentators as a publicity-seeking billionaire, with no chance of ever entering the White House as the nation’s chief executive. The summer of 2015, which would become known as the “Summer of Trump,” would prove them all wrong. With the slogan MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and urging voters to board the TRUMP TRAIN, real estate mogul would quickly emerge as the GOP frontrunner, sowing panic in the ranks of the Republican Party. establishment.

Why did the media experts and political consultants fail so conspicuously in reading the political landscape in America? How was Donald Trump able to connect so effectively with a large part of the electorate? Can Trump win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, and prevail in the general election? If Donald Trump is elected America’s 45th president, can he implement his agenda, and how effective a president would he be?

DONALD TRUMP 2016: America’s Next President? offers an objective look at the state of American presidential politics and Donald Trump ‪ the candidate. Sheldon Filger provides a fresh perspective on the Trump presidential campaign, avoiding the partisan stereotypes that typically dominate any discussion of Trump ‪and the 2016 presidential election. The author presents the case that America is undergoing a radical revolution in political affairs, and the Trump phenomenon is an inseparable outcome stemming from the growing alienation and disaffection Americans harbor toward the nation’s political elites.

The presidential campaign of Trump‪ has stumped the GOP ‪establishment, with the ‪#Republican Party in near shock over the radical revolution occurring in American presidential politics. The slogans MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN ‪‪and TRUMP TRAIN have overwhelmed traditional Republicans. So have Trump’s policy positions, including immigration, taxes, trade and the economy.‪

In his analysis of Donald Trump and the 2016 presidential election, Sheldon Filger provides the reader with an opportunity to view the real estate mogul’s ascent in political viability within a broader context of national malaise, and crisis within the body politic. DONALD TRUMP 2016:America’s Next President? not only explores the vices and virtues of the celebrity candidate running for president; the book is also an indictment of a political culture that across the land, but especially in Washington DC, has evolved into a dysfunctional failure.

The “Summer of Trump” is now the “Autumn of Trump.” Donald Trump continues to maintain his lead over all other challengers for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. The latest Reuters poll has the following data:

Trump 31%

Carson 21%

Bush 8%

Rubio 7%

Fiorina 5%

Paul 4%

Trump has been the frontrunner in the GOP presidential race since July. Despite many predictions from pundits, Donald Trump not only has help onto his lead–he is very far ahead of his opposition, with only Ben Carson holding a double digit poll number. Jeb Bush, who was early on predicted to be the early frontrunner, has instead faded into the political sunset.

Russian roulette is the macabre game of death, in which a revolver with a single bullet is passed around, each player pointing a gun at his head and pressing the trigger. There is, mathematically speaking, a one in six chance of blowing one’s brains to smithereens. This morbid game of chance, strangely enough, has now been adopted as the primary fiscal model by that once-august body known as the United States Congress.

As numerous commentators have observed, the two-party political oligarchy that dominates American politics has becomes hopelessly polarized. That polarization in turn has morphed into political paralysis, leading to an inability by policymakers to craft rational economic directives in the midst of an ongoing global economic crisis. The result is tepid economic growth at best, fueled by massive, trillion dollar per annum deficits that require staggering amounts of borrowing by the U.S. Treasury to stave off national insolvency. Therein lies the problem. The Obama administration must periodically come to Congress for authorization to raise the national debt limit; without such congressional approval, the government loses its authority to borrow money. In a situation where Congress is politically divided, with the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and venting unrestrained hostility towards President Obama, the entire economy of the United States is held hostage to this political version of sausage-making.

The last stand-off over the debt limit led to The Budget Control Act of 2011. The GOP acquiesced to raising the debt limit on condition that the Obama administration concurred with over 900 billion dollars in spending cuts over the next decade. And herein lay the minefield. Since the Democrats and Republicans could not reach consensus on those precise deficit reduction measures, they did agree to creating a poison pill for themselves, which has since become known by the non-pharmaceutical name of sequestration. If Congress could not agree on which spending cuts to implement, arbitrary reductions in federal spending outlays would occur automatically, with 85 billion dollars in budget cuts coming into effect in the current fiscal year.

That wasn’t supposed to happen, for this was playing Russian roulette with fiscal policy and management of the overall national economy. Who in their right mind among the two political parties controlling Congress would want the entire globe to witness American legislators playing a game of Russian roulette as their methodology of economic management? Yet that is exactly what has now happened.

There are arguments currently underway as to how much of an impact 85 billion dollars in arbitrary spending reductions will have on a still fragile economy. These concerns miss the essential point. The fact that America’s political establishment has allowed such a spectacle to occur presents a discordant image to the global bond market that is essential for lending the credit that keeps the United States solvent. And increasingly, those critical lenders are seeing the fiscal decision-making of the United States being transformed into a farcical display of political expediency. There will come a time when the bond vigilantes will simply have had enough of an increasingly dysfunctional political system still acting as though it presides over an unassailable superpower. When that time has come, the mother of all sequestrations will have arrived.

The so-called fiscal cliff, a creation of Washington politicians, means that a tsunami of tax increases and spending cuts will batter the American economy, due to, among other things, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. As the United States is still coping with a severe economiccrisis, and depends on structural mega-deficits to keep its economy afloat, the fiscal cliff threatens to derail for what passes for an economic recovery-one that is feeble at best.

The hope of forestalling a major fiscal drag on a weak American economy is a compromise involving increased revenue generation combined with selective spending cuts. But the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, and the Democrats, who control the White House and the Senate, thus far are unable to compromise. Thus, global markets watch in stupefied wonder as the American political establishment morphs into a circular firing squad, as witnessed with the latest shenanigan.

House speaker John Boehner boasted that his GOP caucus would pass his so-called “Plan B,” which offered feeble tax increases along with far more massive social spending cuts, while leaving military spending increases intact. However, even a token tax increase limited to only those earning more than one million dollars per annum, was more than the Tea Party stalwarts of the GOP could stomach. Instead of a vote, Boehner embarrassingly withdrew his own “Plan B,” and in the process turned what passes for the modern-day Republican Party into a laughing stock. Meanwhile, America’s creditors watch nervously, as the political games in Washington continue undiminished, while thoughtful economic policy takes a back seat to ideological priorities.

Amid tepid economic growth that can only be maintained by massive fiscal deficits, the political establishment in Washington DC, especially within the GOP, is looking increasingly dysfunctional to a world in whichAmerica’s economic dominance is likely to be surpassed by the new emerging economic giants, China and India, perhaps within the next 10-20 years. Unless a moment of sanity can prevail in Washington, whereby economic policy is crafted by real economists instead of fringe ideological movements, the fiscal cliff that will ensue will contribute significantly towards the permanent economic decline of the United States.

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

Rush Limbaugh, the unofficial, corpulent and titular leader of what passes as the contemporary Republican Party, has made his decision early about the GOP standard bearer for 2012. Making full use of his electronic platform, Limbaugh has anointed Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his preferred presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

Raised up from the obscurity of Alaska politics, Ms. Palin was vaulted onto the national stage by 2008 GOP presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, as his Vice Presidential pick. Despite the obvious deficiencies in her resume for national office, she has not let go of that delivered prominence. There is no doubt about her intentions to run in the primaries for the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination and credibility as a serious contender.

However, the doubts that surfaced about her intellectual acumen and global comprehension in 2008 do remain, and will prove a potentially insurmountable barrier if she is destined to engage in gladiatorial combat with President Barack Obama directly, instead of sparring with Joe Biden as she did in 2008. Writing off her critics as incorrigible “liberals” will not suffice to close the electoral gap, even if the economy remains in recession. Her chances of defeating Obama in 2012 appear meager at best, unless Sarah Palin were to confound not only her critics but also the entire political establishment by doing something bold and dramatic. And I have just the suggestion.

Governor Sarah Palin should seriously consider posing nude for me. “Surely you jest,” I can hear echoing among my skeptical readers. However, I offer this suggestion to Palin in all seriousness, and here is why. Let us assume that Palin’s decision to run for President in 2012 is predicated on her firm belief that the governor has the exceptional intellect and leadership skills required to make the case that she would be a superior commander in chief in comparison with President Obama. Factor in the conviction that conservative Republicans have that there is a built-in liberal bias by mainstream media that inhibits her ability to communicate that innate and sparkling brilliance to a large segment of the voting American public. Does Sarah Palin really believe that round two with the likes of Katie Couric on foreign policy will prove more successful in showing her up as a superior geopolitical thinker to Obama? I say to Palin, skip the intellectual media duel with Barack Obama, and beat him on aesthetics.

What I propose for the 2012 GOP presidential frontrunner is a full-course nude art study. This is distinct from a Playboy photo spread, which would simply portray her as another naked female celebrity. A fine art nude exploration of the physicality of Sarah Palin would bring out the complexity and spiritual essence, as well as external beauty of Sarah Palin, in a manner that is both intriguing yet substantive. More substantive than another appearance on Saturday Night Live, and not nearly as tortured as one-on-one media interviews. She would not have to speak a line, play “name that foreign leader” or otherwise expose herself to ridicule about her knowledge deficit. Yet, by posing for a nude art study, she would actually be saying much about herself that even those deemed by her supporters as iconoclast liberals would admire. Sarah Palin as a subject for my photography would be demonstrating courage, boldness, and an appreciation for the value of art in American culture that would shatter most of the stereotypes that exist about her. By allowing herself to be the subject of a nude art study, Sarah Palin would also be making a statement to the American electorate that would be unprecedented; here is a politician who is comfortable in her own skin, and willing to reveal everything about herself. Symbolically, Sarah Palin as a nude Venus would be an aesthetic affirmation of her intention never to conceal anything from the American people.

Sarah Palin as nude art would not only establish her dominance and feminine power in the tough world of male-dominated American politics; it would give her an advantage over President Obama that would be unassailable. Despite all his other political gifts, there is no possibility that Barack Obama would pose nude, nor would there be equal interest in his doing do.

So here I offer Sarah Palin most excellent advice for creating momentum for her 2012 presidential run. Best of all, this advice is offered free, unlike the torturous reinvention of her persona being fabricated by highly priced political consultants. As the Alaska governor considers this unique political opportunity, she may be curious of what posing nude for me is actually like. Her staff can do the research by checking the testimonials of several women who have posed for me, posted on my website, FemmeNudes.com, http://www.femmenudes.com.

Is the Alaska Governor, who believes she is destined by history to defy political trends by defeating a popular incumbent president and becoming America’s first woman president, bold and courageous enough to do something so unconventional and unanticipated? Only if she is the truly exceptional and gifted politician she claims to be. Do I think she will actually take up my creative offer? Well, I’ll put it this way. Unlike Janis Joplin, I won’t be sitting around waiting each day until 3.00 PM. However, in the unpredictable world of America’s media-based politics, you never know.